A quick recap of my experience last night ...
Flew in on QF 481 from Melbourne last night (VH-EBM, nice!), touched down at 1935 but had to wait for an aircraft to leave the gate before we could move in. Pax offloaded at approximately 2010 into an empty PER-T2 (quite eery), and being redirected through outbound security as the inbound area and baggage carousels had flooded due to the roof caving in (as per above photos).
Check in had been closed for all remaining flights for the evening, and re-opened at 2100. Upon arrival at the one baggage carousel which was moving inside T2 (#2 for anyone who's following), which had four flights worth of passengers (~700) crowding around (from KTA, SYD, BNE & MEL) ... with no bags coming out. Eventually an announcement was made that the SYD & BNE flights were being offloaded at T3 (Multi-User Terminal) as they were the only usable carousels, so about 350 passengers move to the other end. Four announcements later (within 20 mins), still no bags for SYD/BNE, of which these people have been waiting since 1830 for their bags (and that's the time, not the year!). An announcement was made for MEL to move to T3 as well, at which point the SYD/BNE bags finally started coming out.
Anyone who has collected bags from T3 will know how short the carousel is, so myself and another passenger took it upon ourselves to start removing bags so that more could be placed on from behind the wall. It was the only logical thing to do and it worked. Bags started coming out much more frequently, we got on our soapbox and told everyone what was going on and the SkyWest girl who was copping all the flack was much appreciative.
Long story short, I waited 90 minutes for my bag, continued to assist with the others for another 30 minutes and decided enough was enough ... especially with QF571 from SYD having just been told to move to T3 to collect their bags. I wasn't going to hang around anymore cause I would have been there until 0200 assisting with the baggage!
